The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) announced this afternoon it has canceled a forthcoming Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) edition about Palestine. An email sent to ACSA member school faculty councilors and head administrators stated the decision was the result of a vote by the ACSA Board of Directors held on February 21. The Fall 2025 issues editorial board included Cruz Garcia, Nora Akawi, Omar Jabary Salamanca, Zo Samudzi, and Nick Estes, and was to be published by Taylor & Francis. The issues web page has been removed from JAEs website. The announcement arrived on the same day McLain Clutter, JAE interim executive editor, was fired by ACSA. Clutter, whose term was supposed to end in 2026, told AN his employment was terminated because he refused to endorse ACSAs decision to halt the publication. Clutter said he was given the opportunity to stay at JAE if he helped put together a replacement edition. Clutter rejected that offer and was subsequently fired. After Clutter was terminated, ACSA executive director Michael Monti sent a letter to JAE editors informing them of these changes; he noted that he would be the primary point of contact for the journal for the time being.I am deeply disappointed by the actions of the ACSA Board, Clutter told AN after he was fired. This decision represents a blatant violation of the principles of academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and ethical scholarship that the organization claims to upholdat precisely the moment when we, as architectural academics, might look to member organizations like the ACSA to help to protect those principles. ACSA will be on the wrong side of history, and they leave faculty at member institutions with little reason for faith in their support.An Extended Series of Difficult DiscussionsJAE is one of two academic journals ACSA publishes and distributes to member schools. The Fall 2025 issue of JAE was to focus on the ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, editors said in the call for papers, which went out last fall. This issue of the Journal of Architectural Education calls for urgent reflections on this historical moments implications for design, research, and education in architecture, the call stated. Today, Cathi Ho Schar is ACSA president, and Jos Gmez is vice president. According to Monti, on behalf of the ACSA board, the decision followed an extended series of difficult discussions within the organization about the potential risks from publishing the issue.Monti added that the ACSA board decided the risks from publishing the issue have significantly increased as a result of new actions by the U.S. presidential administration as well as other actions at state levels. These substantial risks include personal threats to journal editors, authors, and reviewers, as well as to ACSA volunteers and staff. They also include legal and financial risks facing the organization overall.Nora Akawi, a Palestinian assistant professor at The Cooper Union who also sits on the JAE editorial board, told AN she was not made aware of the February 21 vote, and she didnt receive an explanation for why the issue was pulled prior to the mass email ACSA sent to its members the afternoon of February 28. The JAE editorial team wasnt included on the email, and Akawi was unaware that the landing page for the issue was removed from the JAE website.Editors RespondIn response to the issues cancellation and Clutters termination, the Palestine issues editors shared the following statement withAN:We are dismayed by the decision, but not surprised given the increasing repression and censorship of all content on Palestine in the US and Europe. The ACSAs statement is presented as a preemptive consideration and care for members of the JAE and members of its own board in the face of political repression by the Trump administration. But in reality, given the ACSA leaderships attempts at censorship since before the call for papers was published in September 2024, it is clear that they are using the new actions by the U.S. presidential administration as a convenient cover to execute what they had been planning to do all along. The ACSA is cancelling the JAE Palestine issue without having read the content of the publication, which is currently under peer-review. Rather than capitulating to external political pressure, the ACSA should be protecting the JAE editorial board, and the academic freedom of the theme editors and of the journals contributors. The ACSA board has the responsibility to uphold the very values it claims to represent.We stand in support of the JAE board, who voted unanimously to publish this call for papers, and call on the ACSA to reinstate both the JAE Palestine issue and McLain Clutter as JAE Interim Executive Editor. We remain in close contact with the JAE editorial board in planning our next steps.Previously, Garcia, one of the issues editors and a member of the JAE editorial board, was part of the ACSA Fellowship to Advance Equity in Architecture. Garcia wrote an article for AN last April about the dangerous smearing and doxing academics who openly support Palestine face today, including Samia Henni, who has been the recipient of death threats and vandalism at ETH Zurich and Cornell University, respectively. Akawi has also been the victim of smear campaigns led by Canary Mission, a doxing website that has been accused by civil rights groups of launching defamatory attacks against scholars who criticize Israel. The ACSAs decision to cancel the Fall 2025 JAE issue on Palestine, citing vague increased risks from political and legal climates, exemplifies the problem of anticipatory obediencea concept critiqued by the [American Association of University Professors], where institutions preemptively censor themselves out of fear of potential backlash rather than upholding academic freedom, Garcia told AN after the announcement. Especially DistraughtThis evening, Ozayr Saloojee, JAEs associate editor of design, sent a message to the potential contributors who submitted material for consideration for the Palestine issue to inform them of this change. We are especially distraught, given the rigorous and beautiful work that you submitted for consideration, which is currently in our peer review process and being reviewed by our volunteer editorial board, external reviewers and theme editors, he wrote. He said that the JAE board is committed to this issue and we are looking for alternative formats and venues to publish this work if not through the ACSA then hopefully through other platforms and spaces.Looking ahead, ACSA said it will publish a Fall 2025 JAE issue with a different theme. ACSA said it is now evaluating its options for the journal within a broader framework. The organization has begun working with its diverse body of faculty members to holistically assess how changes in the legal and political climate facing higher education and nonprofit associations will affect member schools, faculty, and students as well as the organizations many programs and services.